May 29, 2013

U.S. Open Entries Shooting Up

They are up to 847, with more likely being entered as I type this. (They were at 835 when I started writing this.) You can check the numbers, see who's entered, and find out who is in what events here. The deadline for entering the Open ended on May 24, last Friday.

Note that there is no Men's or Women's Singles listed, or Under 21 Men and Women. These four events are part of the ITTF Pro Tour event, technically called the "America's Challenge Series." You can see the list of entries for that here. (This goes straight to "Men Entries." For women, click on the link for "Women Entries" at top left.)  The listing says there are 86 entries, which seems strange because I see 34 men and 32 women listed, or 66 total. I don't see a separate listing for Under 21 - they seem to be included in the Men's and Women's listings. The deadline for entering is June 3, so more entries are probably coming. Here's the ITTF page for the America's Challenge Series.

There's an overlap between the events - many players are entered in both the Open and the Pro Tour Events. (But there are restrictions - for example, players were told they had to choose between the Under 21 events and the Junior Team Competition in the Open, since both start Tuesday morning.) To get an exact number I'd have to go through the Pro Tour entries one by one to see if they are also in the Open, so I'll leave that to someone else. (Plus it's kind of pointless right now, since the Pro Tour deadline isn't until June 3, so there'll be more entries.)

It'll be the most entries at an Open since the ratings went online in 1994 (so you can check the numbers), and has already topped the most for a Nationals, the 837 in 2006. The "normal" record is still held by the 1974 and 1975 U.S. Opens in Oklahoma City and Houston, where we had over 1000 entries. We were also over 800 at the Open a number of times in the 1980s when it was held in Miami Beach. (I did all the computer entry input for two U.S. Opens, I believe in 1988 and 1989.) Technically, the record is held by the 1990 U.S. Open in Baltimore, where there were something like 2000 players, but that included players in the World Veterans Championships and a World Junior Championships (not sure of the exact title of that).

One discrepancy problem - numbers given online for Opens and Nationals do not show those entered only in doubles, hardbat, or sandpaper events (since they are not rated by USATT), while the listing for this year's Open does. This is especially true since the introduction of hardbat events at the Nationals in 1997 and at the Open in 1998. For those years, you can probably add 20-30 entries to the numbers. Before that, perhaps add 10-20 for doubles-only players.

I'll be at the U.S. Open (of course!) both coaching and playing. My focus there will be coaching, but I'm also entered in a bunch of hardbat events (Open, Over 40, Open Doubles, Over 50 Doubles) and Open Sandpaper. I've won a bunch of these hardbat events in the past, and hope to add a few more while I can still play. If there are a lot of conflicts in my schedule with players I'm coaching, however, I might have to default some of them.

Hardbat doubles has always been my strength. (I'm normally a sponge player, and coach sponge, but hardbat is a sideline.) I've won it 13 times at the Open or Nationals, nine times with Ty Hoff, four times with Steve Berger. Neither of them are playing this year, so I have a new partner - Jay Turberville in both Open Hardbat Doubles and Over 50 Hardbat Doubles. (They only started the Over 50 Doubles last year, and this is my first time playing in it.) Hopefully our styles will mesh. In hardbat, I'm an all-out forehand attacker with a chopping backhand. I believe Jay is mostly attack from both sides, though he can also chop. As to singles, I've won Over 40 four times and Open Hardbat twice, but it's harder and harder every year to play my all-out forehand attack, and I'm 53. I could of course chop more, but then my level goes down. (Also, I use a very fast hardbat racket for attacking, and it's difficult to chop with it. If I went to a slower, more defensive blade, my forehand attacks would be less effective.)

I am so tempted to enter Over 50 Men, which starts Friday at 6PM. The top seed is rated 2280, not that far ahead of me. (Dan Seemiller isn't entered - so far.) If I play well, I'd be in the mix for that event. However, I'm already in too many events, and the more I play, the more conflicts there would be with my coaching. Plus, perhaps even more important, while I can go from sponge to hardbat easily, the reverse is difficult, and after playing hardbat events from Tue-Thur, I doubt I'd play well with sponge on Friday. (Though I would be playing some sponge - warming up players I coach. Not quite the same thing, though)

How Table Tennis Players Should Introduce Themselves

I've never been good at recognizing people. At tournaments people regularly come up to me to say hi, and I'm lost as to who they are. It's not their fault; it's mine. Many of them were at camps I've run, or players I've played or coached against. So here's my solutions, as I explained to some of our players at MDTTC: for now on, at tournaments, table tennis players should adopt a new method of greeting whereby instead of saying "hi" and shaking hands, they call out their rating and shadow practice their forehand and backhand strokes. From that I will unerringly know who they are. I'm sure most could similarly recognize my snappy forehand stroke, or my even more distinctive forehand pendulum serve where I tend to jerk my head.

Table Tennista

As usual, there are lots of international articles at Table Tennista. Here are the current headlines.

Laser vs. Ping-Pong Ball

Here's a video (2:21) showing what happens when a laser beam hits normal objects, including (58 seconds in for 22 seconds) a ping-pong ball.

USA Soccer Team Members Play TT

Here's a video (5:12) from last year where "U.S. Men's National Team players Brek Shea, Juan Agudelo, and Heath Pearce battle it out for table tennis supremacy during their downtime from training."

Non-Table Tennis Writing

Yesterday Science Fiction Writers of American published my article "Fifty Writing Quotes." It's literally what the title says, fifty quotes I came up with about writing for the benefit of writers. They pay 5 cents/word, so I got $45 for the article. (Here's the direct permanent link.)

I also sold two science fiction stories this month: "Human Help Desk" (1000 words) on May 3 to Abyss & Apex, and "Tyler's Ten" (6800 words) to New Myths Magazine. Plus my SF story "Better or Worse?" came out in Suddenly Lost in Words Vol. 3  on May 23. It's been a busy year for my SF writing; I have two other stories forthcoming, "Leashing the Muse" (4800 words) coming out soon in Space and Time Magazine, and "Galahad Returns" (6300 words) in Weird Tales, scheduled for their October issue.

Stop Monkeying Around

An orangutan with a modified penhold grip. (If you can't see it in Facebook, try this.)

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